Saltburn - Emerald Fennell's Satire of the British Upper Classes Serves up Shocks and Laughs

 

Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) Saltburn's Villainous Protagonist, on the lawns of the Estate.

Tell Me What You Want: Irish Actor Barry Keoghan Steals the Show as Saltburn's multifaceted Protagonist

For an otherwise exciting, well-paced movie, the twist at the end of Emerald Fennell's Saltburn is rather disappointing. Human greed at work again. Yawn. But I'll come back to that.

Director and Writer Emerald Fennell has created what is likely to become a cult classic with her movie, the title of which references the lavish British country Estate where half of the film's action takes place.

Saltburn is home of the aristocratic Cattons. We first meet the son, Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi) at Oxford University, where he studies, and is admired from afar by Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan). Felix does what you would expect him to - parties, attracts women effortlessly, drinks and dances into all hours of the night with his friends, and lets the trash pile up in his room because cleaning is something you leave for the Maid.

Felix and Oliver meet, seemingly by accident, when Felix's bike has a flat tire and he borrows Oliver's to make it to class. Up until this point in the film, Oliver's best friend on campus is an ultra nerd who at one point yells at Oliver to ask him a numerical sum so that he can prove his genius-like math ability. 

Clearly wanting to move with Felix's set, Oliver gets his wish. Though with a last name like Quick, you've got to believe some foreshadowing is being done.

Oliver gamely puts up with the social humiliations that are part of university life. Including at graduation when Felix's cousin Farleigh Start (Archie Madekwe) make a comment about Oliver almost passing as human in his rented Tuxedo. 

Oliver and Farleigh Start (Archie Madekwe) compare Tuxedos at their Oxford University graduation.

 
After relating a sob story about his home life to Felix, Oliver is soon invited to spend the summer at Saltburn. This is when the story really gets its' wings. We get to see so many sides of Oliver's personality - shy nerd, sly social manipulator, horny, needy creature. You can't take your eyes off of him. 

This is what the film does best. It leaves you guessing until the end about what exactly it is that our unreliable narrator really needs. Does he want to be adopted into the Catton family? Does he want to have sex with Felix (and who could blame him?) 

Or is he just out for the money?

We are introduced to other members of the Catton family as they watch television in a common room. There's Sir James Catton (Richard E. Grant) the Patriarch. Generous, slightly absent minded, odd sense of humour. His wife Elspeth Catton (Rosamund Pike). Her delivery of barbed comments is so good, and so casual. They make for some of the movie's funniest moments.

Venetia Catton (Alison Oliver) Felix's Sister, is a dreamy, moody creature with an unspecified psychological condition. Something that has an effect on her eating habits. She's the most perceptive member of the family.

Cousin Farleigh is also staying at Saltburn for the Summer. He pegs Oliver as a rival, and a potentially dangerous outsider from the start. 

What follows is a game of Oliver's construction set against the backdrop of Summer on the estate. 

The climax occurs at a 'Midsummer Night's Dream' themed birthday party for Oliver on the estate's grounds. By this point Oliver has been exposed to Felix as a liar who made up the sob story about his family (he has two normal looking parents who live in a pleasant house).

Surrounded by all of the pomp, spectacle, and excess, Oliver looks lonely and lost. The people around him who are partying it up stand in stark contrast to this strange person.

Saltburn does a lot as a movie, and much of it well. The cinematography, music, pacing and shock comedy (you will never look at bath time with Rubber Ducky the same way) stand out for me. 

The ending left me cold. The proximity to money and the things it can buy makes Oliver throw any values he has straight out the window. 

"Stranger Danger" indeed, as Venetia Catton aptly puts it near Saltburn's end. When the time is already far too late to do something about said danger.

A Single Man - Christopher Isherwood's Excellent Novel Re-Imagined

I've been horribly lazy about updating my blog. The last post was two months ago now. Time to ease back into things, and what better season for getting serious about the printed (and digital) word than winter? It doesn't actually feel like winter in Hogtown yet; the high today was 18 degrees according to Environment Canada, and it's plus 11 as I begin writing this at 10:30 p.m.

To the point of this entry — I've been engrossed lately with Christopher Isherwood's short novel A Single Man.

Contd.

It's now Thursday, Nov. 12. I couldn't finish an entire entry last night, I was so tired I had to drop. But back to my original point, Christopher Isherwood's novel turned movie — A Single Man. The first thing worth mentioning about this book is its' remarkable brevity and power. It's only 156 pages long. Isherwood's masterful grasp of the English language is apparent on every page. I don't think there's a single wasted word in those 156 pages.

A Single Man follows a day in the life of George, a transplanted Englishman who is teaching at a technical college in California. It's the early 1960s', and George is entering late middle age. He's still reeling from the death of his partner Jim, which has occurred a year previous to the events detailed in the book. Being 1962, George can't be open about his grief and loss. His world is still hostile to homosexuals, who are put in more or less the same league as Communists by the American government of the day. This makes George, understandably, slightly paranoid.

He moves through the world performing all the actions and gestures that society expects of him, but George is really just going through the motions. He is hyper self-conscious. This element of George's personality gives A Single Man much of its' insight and dark comedy. As in this passage where George is critically examining one of his students:

"George finds himself almost continually aware of Kenny's presence in the room, but this doesn't mean that he regards Kenny as an ally. Oh, no - he can never venture to take Kenny for granted. Sometimes when George makes a joke and Kenny laughs his deep, rather wild, laugh, George feels he is being laughed with. At other times, when the laugh comes a fraction of a moment late, George gets a spooky impression that Kenny is laughing not at the joke but at the whole situation: the educational system of this country, and all the economic and political and psychological forces which have brought them into this classroom together."

One over-the-top review in my pulp paperback edition says Isherwood's novel captures, "the flavour of life itself." I'm hard-pressed to disagree.

The movie version starts Colin Firth as the titular professor, Julianne Moore as his best friend, and Nicholas Hoult of the television series Skins, as Kenny, the student with the weird laugh. He plays a more important role in George's life, but I'm going to leave you with that teaser. This is an essential, must-read book you've got to discover for yourself.

You can find the trailer for Tom Ford's adaptation of A Single Man online here. The movie is being released in the U.S. on December 11. I hope it makes it to Canada the same day.